Last night I booked in at the Cortez Hotel, and it looks like it's going to be another winner in the AHS series.
Right from the beginning I was completely overwhelmed by the awesomeness of this story, starting with the hotel itself, which is simply out of this world. Is it real, or CGI? Either way, it looks fantastic, especially since I'm a sucker for Art Deco.
Great horror in one of the first scenes when the creature comes out of the mattress.

Just like the previous AHS series, it's not really suspenseful (like a thriller), but suspense requires a certain narrative, which doesn't work for a show like AHS.
But I like it for what it is, instead of disliking it for what it isn't.
It's a stylish carnival of horrors, a glorious over-the-top mix of terror, eroticism and glamour.

The horror is just as evil and brutal as in the previous seasons, but it's never disgusting.
But there's so much more: fashion shows, a Disco Vampire Queen (which explains Jessica Lange's absence, because no matter how good she is, she would have been too old for this part). Finn Wittrock reprises his role of the sexy and psychopathic "enfant terrible", and there are more handsome male characters on this show

Add to that some 70s vintage (blaxploitation movies in the style of Cleopatra Jones, and a scene in the famous Studio 54), cool 80s music and, last but not least, some genuine drama too, and you have a brilliant and bizarre mix of styles.
The drama comes in small doses but somehow that makes it even more effective.

And at the end of episode three they did this:

:fantastic:

There's also a feud between the Main Villains, which is kinda similar to the feud of season 3 "Coven". I think it's going to be fun.

Still got 9 episodes to go, I have no idea what to expect, but I hope they keep up the quality of these first 3 episodes.

Hotel is a very wild and visual ride! Iris and Liz Taylor are my absolute favs of that season. Another AHS-gem!

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I hate when old people poke you at a wedding and say "you are next".
So next time i was at a funeral i poked them and said "you are next".

Episodes 4 - 6
I thought "Devil's Night" was a bit of filler episode, it wasn't awful but I found all the famous un-dead criminals too gimmickry, and since it may or may not have happened it felt like a very long dream sequence. I couldn't wait for the story to continue.
So, the countess has a child too. Was she lying about having the baby aborted? To me it looked as if the baby was supposed to live, not die, and that she went to the doctor in the Murder House because she couldn't go to a normal hospital.

Things get a little out of hand after Alex has saved a boy's life with her infected blood. More evil kids!

Still haven't figured out what Sally is...she's not infected so I guess she's a ghost, but everyone can see her, she's not just John's hallucination.

I'm unsure about it. I was so excited and love Sarah Paulsen's character but it seems to be being used as a platform for Lady Gaga and there is too much of the blood (and her) for me. I think she looks amazing but the storyline all seems to be going one way so far and lacks a mix that other seasons have had (apart from The Coven). I will try to get back into it as I'm only on Episode 5. Love Kathy Bates and Elizabeth Taylor.

I really miss "AHS Hotel" since i finished it, which is always a good sign.
So i'll definetly 'check in' again sooner or later, also because i'm sure i missed some things and there's more to discover everytime i watch it again - like always in AHS.

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I hate when old people poke you at a wedding and say "you are next".
So next time i was at a funeral i poked them and said "you are next".

Still haven't figured out what Sally is...she's not infected so I guess she's a ghost, but everyone can see her

Click to expand...

So, it turned out she was a ghost after all.
This show had a very strong start but lost its edge, especially in the last 4 episodes. It's really not exciting to watch victim #45 being stabbed to death.
I also thought that the story became too much tongue in cheek and light-hearted, which was also the problem with "Coven".
There were some surprisingly touching scenes (mostly Liz and Iris) but at the same time it's hard to feel sorry for murderers who deserve to burn in hell.
But AHS is "anything goes" and therefore the standards of non-supernatural drama do not apply here.

To me, the biggest flaw was the use of ghosts portrayed as humans. Sure, "they were dead" but that didn't stop them from interacting with living people as if nothing had changed. These ghost characters could kill, and appear and disappear whenever they wanted to, and I think the writers got away with too many things in this case.
Patrick Marsh was my least favourite character, I would have preferred him to be more mysterious, and maybe only appear in the final episode as the monster of all evil.
Initially he was a super-rich psycho who loved to kill, merely because he was bored and wanted to do something more extreme, and then they changed it into the Ten Commandments story.
Yes, it turned out that John (the 10 Commandments Killer) was influenced by Marsh, but Marsh never killed to punish. He killed just because he liked it.
Therefore that connection didn't really work for me.
The Countess wasn't evil right from the start, she married Marsh because she thought Valentino had left her, and then when she discovered her husband with one of his victims she was like "oh cool! Next time I want to watch".
??

No complaints about the actors, they all did a terrific job, especially Kathy Bates and Lady Gaga. The set (a real one, not CGI) was a masterpiece, others shows could learn from this.